Full STEAM ahead with public boarding school for sciences

By Tamara Dietrich

Fort Monroe could host STEAM Academy

Fort Monroe Authority

Fort Monroe Authority

The country may lag in producing graduates in science, technology, engineering and math, but a local group is pushing forward to remedy that with the commonwealth's first four-year public boarding school to prepare students for 21st-century careers.

Co-founders of the nascent Virginia STEAM Academy — for Science, Technology, Engineering and Applied Mathematics — are signing a memorandum of understanding with Jefferson Science Associates/Jefferson Lab in Newport News.

It's the latest partnership forged between the academy and a host of business groups and non-profits, universities and science and research communities, and state and local governments to launch the residential high school by the fall of 2014.

"If we're going to compete in this global economy," said M. Caroline Martin, "we've got to start producing those who can."